INTRODUCTION TO STEM? THAT’S ELEMENTARY
These were no ordinary building blocks, and Klaire Padgett and Daxton Stanton were doing more than just playing.
The pair, huddled in the Ed White E-STEM Magnet School library, were learning the rudiments of computer coding.
“You can do anything,” the pony-tailed Klaire said before describing how the plastic and metal cubes — part of a robotics construction system — connect and move.
Each block is like a code. One cube is the “brain” that runs the system. Another block will tell the creation to spin. If connected correctly, students can build patterns that turn left or turn right.
“You need a sensor and also you need the brain and it can move around,” the 6-year-old said, focusing on making the blocks click together as she spoke. “When you don’t put the wheels on the right way, it doesn’t go the right way.”
Daxton, 7, popped on the piece with a headlight and, like a bright idea, the creation lurched forward with a beam.
“Whenever you take off the sensor, it stops,” Klaire said.
Tamiko Brown, named the 2017 School Librarian of the Year by School Library Journal, was almost as excited as the two youngsters.
“They’re learning how to code aesthetically and in a primary way,” she said.
The interdisciplinary curriculum known as STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — is an immersive experience at the Clear Creek ISD campus and the foundation of every aspect of learning.
From constructing wooden skiffs with real-life buoyancy to studying bird watching in the school’s nature preserve, STEM concepts animate the curriculum from kindergarten through fifth grade.
The El Lago school, in far southeast Harris County near Johnson Space Center, has been closely aligned with the space program for decades. Photos of astronauts and tributes to NASA adorn hallways. Students are known by their collective mascot name, the Satellites.
In the library, imagination reaches beyond books to technology. Exercises, like the cube construction system that has Klaire and Daxton continuously curious, influence students to think beyond today’s realities.
When he grows up, the bespectacled Daxton said he wants to do something that’s possible now only in video games.
“I’m basically making that game in real life,” he said, before making the sound of an explosion and motioning away from himself. “Video game things out here. People coming out of a book and getting in a book.”
Ed White E-STEM also engages students through makerspace, crafter and tech clubs.
The robotics team used the library’s 3-D printer to create parts for a mobility assistance device designed to help physically challenged animals. The fluffy white stuffed dog in the library, it turns out, wasn’t a toy. The plush animal was the stand-in pet on which team members tested their prototype.
Brown said “forward thinking” has allowed her to bring new concepts and learning opportunities to all of the school’s students.
“I just really want to try to have the best library that I can for my STEM campus. I’m not just a librarian — I’m a STEM librarian,” she said. “We just really encourage student voice, student empowerment — and just innovation and creation.”
Building adjustable water basins out of clear plastic shoeboxes has turned the school’s fifth-graders into amateur engineers and construction managers. Working in teams recently in the campus engineering lab, students chose from a dozen materials to create operable dams that can hold back 2 liters of water and control the flow. They can use items such as polystyrene, foil, straws, dowels and duct tape. There also is a financial problem to be solved. Besides the box, the teams have a strict $8 budget to buy materials for the original prototype and the redesign.
It’s an exercise in understanding renewable and nonrenewable resources in conjunction with a hands-on project that helps students connect innovation to alternative energy and hydroelectric power, fifth-grade science and math teacher Nicole Long said.
“They get to design something. They get to test it out. And when it doesn’t work — or it doesn’t work perfectly — they get to go back and redesign and fix what they think they could have done better and retest it again and see some improvement,” she said. “As teachers, when we’re running this lab, it’s really our job to just kind of back up and let them discover that for themselves. They really get really good at accepting failure and knowing that that’s not the end, knowing that they can try again.”
Technology concepts come to life for children through immersion